


A Fruitless Crown

by LadyNighteyes



Category: Radiant Historia
Genre: Character Study, Fix-It, Gen, Not Remake Compliant, Post-Canon, Spoilers, Viewpoint Character is Not a Good Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25054438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNighteyes/pseuds/LadyNighteyes
Summary: After the war, Protea tends a garden.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 34





	A Fruitless Crown

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: if you like what Perfect Chronology did with Protea, you’ll probably want to skip this one.

The tomatoes were wilting again.

Protea glared at the vines, which wound skeletally up the trellises to end in drooping leaves spotted in yellow. She'd done _everything_. When they'd begun to fail before, she'd swallowed her pride and crawled to the woman next door for help, and bitten her tongue as the old crone had told her like she was a child that she was _pouring water_ the wrong way. So Protea had gone home and started watering the ground around the damn tomatoes instead of snapping about what difference it could make to a plant where she held the watering can, because the old biddy had a garden that bloomed like the gods themselves had kissed the ground it grew from. At first, Protea had started to think that maybe there had been something to the peasant superstition after all; she'd even begun to make the back-breaking trek to the canal and back twice more every day just to make sure the whole plot of earth was completely sodden.

But here they were, leaves hanging curled and limp once again.

She kept expecting—well, not to wake up, exactly, but for someone to arrive and say there had been a mistake. She'd go home and clean the grime from under her fingernails, scrub the unaccustomed calluses off her hands, and the last few months would be... distant. No more sweating in the hot sun, or grovelling to serfs for help, or burnt dinners because she hadn't had to cook for herself in twenty years. Or the _weeding_ , gods and spirits, she hated the weeding. There was a play she'd seen once, back before she met Victor, about a queen whose kingdom fell; she found joy in a simple life, the chorus had said, her prior life of decadence retreating into a distant fever dream. She'd married a good-hearted commoner in the last act and had a handful of children in the epilogue, though Protea had never seen the appeal of that last part.

She missed the theater.

Protea wasn't going back to the old woman for help. She stared helplessly at the fading tomato plants, then turned decisively to where the weeds were, once again, beginning to intrude on the carrot patch. The sun beat down on the back of her neck as she worked; she'd gotten a peeling sunburn there in the first month. She knew she ought to cover it for the sake of her skin, but the way the _sweat_ got into her clothes and then the dirt ground into it, the more she wore the less she felt like she'd ever be clean again. She missed _baths_. A basin of water heated over the fire was a poor substitute, and she wouldn't have let the servants scrub the floors with the stuff they called soap out here.

She ripped out a fistful of some tangling vine. Good rosewater soap, yes. And the ointment she put on her skin in cold weather; her hands felt raw all the time these days. She could probably have mixed up a batch of her mother's wrinkle cream herself, but there was no way to get cactus crab grease in a place like this. Even just a few cosmetics—a concealer to even her complexion, a spot of color for her cheeks—she would have sweated it off in minutes most days, but she barely recognized herself in the mirror without it.

It wasn't as if there was anyone _else_ out here who would know the queen's face on sight.

She finished the rest of the row slowly, the wet earth slowly soaking through her ratty work gloves. Grass had taken root in places; she hadn't thought much of it, but it was surprisingly difficult to pull out. It was moving into the dead of afternoon, when even the birds went quiet in the stifling heat.

When she got to the end of the row, she wiped the sweat from her brow—decades of muscle memory still protested that she'd ruin her makeup—and squinted up at the sky. She'd heard you could gauge the time from the position of the sun, but she'd never gotten the trick of it.

That was when she noticed the man leaning on her fence. She started in surprise; he seemed so at ease that he could have been there for hours. He didn't seem to notice her regard, looking around pensively. She supposed the village had seemed picturesque enough to her when she'd first arrived, with the flowering ivy trained up the whitewashed buildings and across the roofs. Before she'd had to rip the stuff out of her lettuce patch by the armload.

"Good day, traveler!" she called.

He glanced at her for a moment, then returned his attention to her hovel, with its door framed by rough-cut beams and its round windows covered by scraps of cloth she'd pinned up in a vain attempt to keep off bugs and prying eyes. She wasn't sure what to make of his expression.

"If you're seeking the market, you've taken a wrong turn," she said, getting carefully to her feet. "There's precious little of interest here."

"This isn't where I expected to find you," he said. He had a soft voice, with an accent like a country lordling who spent too much time around the peasantry.

"Sir?" she said, hand flying to her mouth in wide-eyed surprise. She'd found it rarely hurt to flatter the ego of a man who had more than you, and he was obviously no farmer.

"I thought you'd be on some baron's estate," he said. "A merchant with money to burn, maybe. Not somewhere like this." Was that flattery? Condemnation? Something else?

"I'm afraid you have the advantage of me," she said, smiling. She didn't need to dissemble much; he was strikingly handsome in a sharp-nosed, angular sort of way. Victor had had that look, and for all the slander that said otherwise, Protea had married him for more than money and power. That was the ideal, wasn't it? A rich, handsome widower?

"Yes," the man said, after a moment of consideration. "I suppose I do."

"My name is Tiya," Protea said, with a careful curtsy. "I know not why a traveler would come in search of me, but—"

"Don't lie to me," he said.

She frowned. Not an ordinary social visit, then. Perhaps the neighbors had been gossiping. "Lie, sir?" she said. "Whatever do you mean? I am but a simple farmer."

"You're wasting your time, Protea," he said. "I tracked the carriage driver down after he fenced the jewelry you gave him. He told me where he left you, and then I asked around the nearby villages after a woman who arrived in town around the right time." A tilt of the head, studying her. "And here you are."

Oh.

She forced another smile; a well-told lie might still put him off. "I don't believe I have ever made your acquaintance before, sir. Perhaps you have mistaken me for someone else?"

He ignored the question. "Dias and Selvan are both dead, you'll be interested to know."

Protea gasped. "But they—" She caught herself. "But surely," she said, "Her Majesty Lady Eruca would not execute those who helped place her on the throne!" Of course she would; who would know better not to trust traitors than a traitor herself?

That got a slight raise of the eyebrows. "Executed? No. They planned to ambush Eruca in the Royal Hall and underestimated the dangers. They were already dead by the time I caught up to them."

A pretty face was a dime a dozen, but there _was_ something about him... Well, even if they had met before, it might as well have been a lifetime ago.

"Such matters of state are too much for me, sir," she said. "But you must be a man of great import to be privy to them. Please, may I know your name and lands?"

"You seemed content enough with 'impertinent knave' last time."

"Sir?" she began, but then her eyes fell on the sword at his hip. It was dark metal in a scabbard of plain leather, a sensible precaution for a traveler when bandits still prowled the roads. There were a thousand others just like it, no doubt, but when she looked back to his face...

"That mercenary," she whispered.

She'd had nightmares about that sword.

"Mercenary?" he said, dryly.

Eruca's right-hand murderer. She'd watched him drive a dagger into a gap in the helmet of the last of her royal guards, and then he'd turned as the body fell and leveled a bloody longsword at her neck. _Surrender the throne. You are no longer queen of this kingdom_.

And he was leaning, calmly, on a split-rail fence in this podunk town, watching her like a scholar studying a butterfly in a jar.

"The girl sent you, didn't she?" Protea demanded. "It wasn't enough to ruin me, so now she sends her hounds to drag me back to be a laughingstock before the court?"

"You don't understand Eruca at all, do you?" he said.

"Silence!" Protea drew herself up. Forget the mud-soaked peasant dress; imagine him in chains in front of her throne. "What right have you to speak that way to a queen?"

"I don't see one here."

She glared at him, but said nothing.

"No," he said, finally. "I came here on my own. I have no intention of dragging you back to Granorg just so Eruca can send you to some country estate to spend the rest of your days plotting."

"Then I suggest you take your leave, _sir_ ," she said with regal frost. "Perhaps you have no greater ambition in life than gawking, but this is my home and I have other matters to attend to."

"A home you found empty because the occupants were conscripted and killed in a war you started," he said. "And perhaps they're due amends for that. I have questions for you, and I intend to get answers."

"A hired cutthroat dares to say _my_ hands are bloody?" she snarled. "What do you know of governance? I made the decisions I deemed fitting, and it is no one's place to question them!"

He straightened up, stretching in a languid show of insolence. "And the fire?" he said. "Was that 'fitting' too?"

"What fire?" Protea snapped.

That seemed to catch him off guard. It was just a moment's hesitation, a startled glance, but it was a crack in his affectation of nonchalance.

"It's far too late to deny your involvement, Protea," he said. "There were a dozen witnesses when you gave the order. You won't be pinning this on your underlings, no matter how you try to wriggle out of it."

"Order? I haven't the faintest inkling what you might mean," she snapped.

She'd met them before, these sorts of firebrands. A baron with a post in the Assembly or the vice-president of some trade guild who thought their petty dominion had earned them the right to question the dictates of a queen, furious that among the innumerable edicts that had passed through her hands, she had placed no special weight on the one that had shattered their tiny little world. The girl had been the worst of them; no wonder she'd attracted others.

"You ordered the city burned," he said quietly. "Thousands of people, Protea. Man, woman, and child, homes, livelihoods. You would have destroyed the entire capital if your instructions had been carried out to the letter. For _nothing_ , Protea."

"For _treason_ ," she snarled.

" _You have no right to speak of treason._ "

Protea flinched despite herself.

"I understand most of it," he said. He sounded conversational once more, the moment of whip-sharp venom gone. "I've known my share of tyrants, and greed and ego are more than enough to account for most evils. But the fire? That was malice. It served no one, even you. Why did you do it?"

Protea lifted her chin. "I regret it. I cannot undo it. I need not explain myself to you, _mercenary_." Then, before he could muster some new needling insult, she knelt back down in the mud and began weeding the second row of carrots.

She grimly ignored the sound of footsteps and crushed a worm that writhed slimily across her hand. Horrible things.

"No flowers," said the man's voice, behind her. She spun, brandishing a trowel as an impotent parody of a weapon.

He wasn't even looking at her. He stood by the tangle of her green bean patch, a slash of bloody color in the washed-out yellow afternoon. "Yours is the only garden in the village with nothing but food planted," he said, the fingers of his left hand tapping idly on the hilt of his sword. "Are you so afraid of the winter?

"Get _out!_ " she shrieked, voice cracking.

The man gave her a considering look, then—disappeared, like a candle flame snuffed out.

Protea's breath caught in her throat.

"I don't understand you, Protea."

She spun, again, and there he was, leaning carelessly on the fence outside once more, sun bright in his hair. "You hate it here," he said. "There are a hundred men with greedy egos you could be plying your charms on. Why stay?"

"How dare you imply—"

"I'm implying nothing. You have your skills, as I have mine. I have no doubt you could find some patron to wrap around your finger without ending up in their bed," he said. "Why haven't you?"

"I have no wish to become some man's _pet_ ," she spat. "Unaccustomed as such a sentiment may be to Eruca's lapdog."

"Even for food in the winter?" he said. "A soft bed and no need to ration firewood? The promise of a crown?"

"Does your queen know her little dog is in service to a traitor?" Protea snarled. "Who sent you, mercenary? Duke Edmund? You may tell him that Queen Protea will have no part in his plots." There had been no shortage of ingratiating men like him, thinking her a dim-witted fool who could be charmed into handing off a portion of her power in a remarriage. She'd always preferred to let Dias and Selvan handle them.

"Edmund has been stripped of his rank and imprisoned," the man said. "I have no interest in helping any others of his ilk with their schemes, either. I told you, the only goal I'm here to further is my own."

"And what, pray tell," she said icily, "would that be?"

"I'm trying to decide," he said, "if I made a mistake when I didn't kill you back in the throne room."

"You impudent—"

It wasn't until then that what he'd said sank in.

"You burned the city because you claimed Eruca was plotting your assassination. I can tell you better than anyone that she intended nothing of the kind," he said, the words dropping into the sudden silence. "Because I offered to do the job, and she turned me down."

This shouldn't be happening in the light of day. It belonged in dark alleys and filthy slums riddled with bandit dens, not a sunny afternoon with every drop of sweat suddenly cold along her back and the distant smell of woodsmoke and wild roses in the air.

"I'll- I'll scream," Protea said. "The neighbors will come, and then—"

"And then I'll come back for you later," the man cut calmly in. "How old was Eruca when you took the throne? Twelve? Thirteen?"

"What has that to do with anything?" she snapped, clutching to anger like a raft.

"She was a _child_ , Protea. A child whose father had just murdered her brother before dying himself, and _you_ were the closest thing to family she had left. And you all but locked her in the dungeons while you set about reveling her kingdom to ruin. Tell me," he said, his eyes like ice, "how old was she when you decided to kill your only heir?"

Protea had shot to her feet at some point, and she stared him down, shaking with rage and adrenaline. "How _dare_ you?" she snarled. "You threaten the life of an unarmed woman and then claim some coign of moral vantage? No doubt whatever barn you were raised in let a dozen errant children run amok and wallow with the pigs, but I will not be lectured by some _blackguard_ for expecting _discipline_ within my house!"

"Is that what you call it?" he said, straightening up. "Burning your capital to the ground to kill an innocent girl? I have plenty of blood on my hands, but you've ended more lives with words alone than I ever could with a blade."

" _Innocent!_ " It was shrill, mocking. "That girl is as innocent as a _viper!_ She began undermining me the very day my husband died, and she barely ceased a whit for a moment after! Questioning me, in front of the whole court!" The words were flowing out in a tide, louder and louder— " _Chiding_ me! The presumptuous little chit thought she could tell _me_ the rights and duties of my office!" She was nearly screaming now, spitting the words in his cold, silent face. "Victor was far too lax with the both of them, because any child raised in _my_ house would know to be seen and not heard! Ha, not that she was fit to be seen before long, either, cutting her hair off with a knife like some alley rat. The night before a banquet, too, just to make sure _she_ was the center of attention! And always begging for her little peasant friends, as though I should waste good coin on some indigent vagabonds too shiftless to live without charity—"

She thought of the house, suddenly, the wood pile always full even though she didn't own an axe—

"They laughed at me behind their hands! That was her goal from the start, to have them jeer at me in dark corners! Trying to trick me, trap me, humiliate me! You must understand!" she said, pleading, desperately searching his face for some shred of mercy. "How was anyone supposed to believe I could control a nation if I was unable to even control my daughter?"

The mercenary was looking at her with a terrible mixture of pity and contempt.

"Is that all you have to say in your defense?" he said, quietly.

" _Please!_ " She stumbled forward, caught herself on the fence. Knew she was mud-stained, sweaty and disheveled, unarmed and staring up at a man who would kill her as easily as blinking. "Please, whatever Eruca wants, tell her I have nothing left to offer! What threat could I possibly present to her?"

"On your own? Little enough," he said. "But as the face of an attempt on the throne? Believe me, Protea, while there is breath in my body I will not allow this kingdom to be endangered because someone who hoped to be the next Count Selvan offered you the chance to live on larks' tongues again."

" _There will be no next Count Selvan!_ "

And _oh_ , she remembered when it had all begun to slip, there in the throne room all those months ago—

"What sort of dullard do you take me for?!" she screamed.

One moment she had been a queen, secure in the seat of her power, thousands of loyal knights at her beck, and then Selvan had turned, and a foreboding tremor had shivered through the foundations, and he'd said—

"I am not so witless as to make myself into a puppet dancing on the strings of some schemer, to be tossed aside as soon as the mummery is over! Do you think I have learned _nothing_ from my humiliation, mercenary? I would consign myself to this wretched village unto my death before I would take two crumbs from the table of another caitiff who sought to use my name as a mask for his own ambitions!"

There was a bitter silence. And then the man in red sighed. It was a quiet, gentle little sound.

"I'm no mercenary, Protea," he said. "I told you that last time we met. I fight on behalf of the future of this continent, not to line my own pockets." He hesitated, and then, carefully, pulled the high collar of his shirt down.

There was a long, livid scar across his throat.

"I know you missed the execution," he said, "but no doubt you've conducted enough of your own to remember the punishment for high treason."

Death by beheading.

Protea looked into those chilly blue-green eyes, in a face that reminded her so much of Victor's, and realized.

"Columbine next door asked me to tell you that you're over-watering your garden," he said. "You'll drown the roots if you're not careful."

And then Prince Ernst turned and walked away, leaving Protea alone under the bright and mocking summer sky.


End file.
